“We are setting the goal of accelerating economic growth to 6 percent, better to 6-7 percent, and join the list of the world’s top five economies in five years but not only because advanced economies will be falling but also because we’ll be growing,” Putin said at a congress of Business Russia public association, which unites the country’s medium-sized businesses.

Russia has set the ambitious task of expanding its per capita gross domestic product by 50 percent in the next decade “to achieve the level of more than $35,000 per person from the current $20,700,” Putin said.

In 2011, Russia’s GDP will grow by 4.2-4.5 percen

Investment in the Russian economy will hit almost 43 trillion rubles ($1.4 trillion) in the next three years, he said.

“In the coming three years, almost 43 trillion rubles will be invested in our economy. To understand this scope, I can say that this amount is about the size of Russia’s GDP last year,” Putin said, adding that this figure was quite realistic.

Russia can no longer build up investment only at the expense of the budget, the public sector and infrastructure companies and needs to take more energetic efforts for creating conditions for business to invest in the national economy, he said.

Russia needs a decisive “tax maneuver” to think about the optimization of taxes that are crucial for the country’s qualitative growth, Putin said, adding that he had given instructions to the Economics and Finance Ministries to work out proposals on readjusting fiscal policy for Russia’s industrial development.

Putin said these calculations should be made taking into account Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization and the prospects of integration processes, including a common economic space and the Eurasian Economic Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.